Authors: Garrett, Alexis; Jaberi, Arian; Viotto, Auston; Yang, Ruiguo; Tamayol, Ali; Malshe, Ajay; Sealy, Michael P.
Keywords: cellular agriculture, cultured meat, edible, polymer, photolithography
A key hurdle to overcome in the development of alternative meat-based protein is the manipulation of mechanical or mastic properties of the 3D scaffolds. These properties influence the mouth feel of the product and must be tunable to achieve a variety of meat analogous textures. The goal of this research was to investigate a printing technology hypothesized to enable textural adjustment in alternative proteins. In pursuit of this goal, a novel digital light processing (DLP) printer with a rotational collector plate was developed to enable radially cured layers with the ability to incorporate multi-material composite structures. The purpose of this research was to quantify the effect of cured layer orientation on the bulk mechanical properties of (gelatin methacryloyl) GelMA scaffolds. In addition, current photocrosslinking systems do not emphasize the edibility of the materials used in the process. Tartrazine, an edible photo-absorber, was investigated in its use for improving print resolution during the crosslinking process.
